CH. 14

Regardless of all the recent advancements of the technology industries, like Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are still far from the idea that a computer could contain any kind of consciousness. As a fundamentally programmed device, computers responses are not based on the spontaneous variety of real subjective human experiences or capable of inferring about anything according to a pre-established belief about something as real people would have. As much as people try to improve machines to create prototypes capable of simulate human experiences, important complex features of brain functions are still missed in these machines.

Numberless unconscious processes of perception or thinking usually happen in our brain all the time without your awareness, influencing even the thoughts that we misinterpret as conscious, but that in fact are shaped by unconscious guides as well. I believe that a computer can be constructed to work in this same way, automatically. Although is the consciousness what differentiates us from machines. As much as a large amount of knowledge can be inserted inside a computer's memory, it is still corresponding to a prefabricated content, which differs in the way that human content is constructed, by the cognitive process through brain areas connections.  The executive control involves our mental resources that guide our actions and process the plans to achieve our goals. Nonetheless, it requires self-control and self-direction that are only possible by the self-monitoring constructed by our own experiences and beliefs.  

In his work, "The Qualia Problem", the philosopher Frank Jackson (1982) states there are truths about consciousness that we cannot infer from the complete physical truth that we acknowledge. Jackson claims that the truth that one knows is also based on this person mental cognition, composed by an element called Qualia. To the author, Qualia represents the subjective array of sensations and experiences of each person, and that cannot be transferred to another one.  Possibly Qualia interfere in people 's lives giving information about different circumstances that will affect the memory construction about all the experiences that we relate them to each other. Hence, it seems evident that the only way to a computer achieves consciousness, might be having executive control. Although, Qualia is only possible to experience because we have brains' mechanisms apt to process input information forming new perspectives to further situations. 

 Although AI allows a computer to make a sort of activities as learning, speak, calculate or sense, a computer is still not able and to perceive each experience and categorize it in the memory as a form of guidance to further events or decisions. So, if we think of the possibility of a computer getting  Qualia, we conclude that it would be unhelpful because of the personal nature of this resource. As long as the computer does not have any brain connection capable of assessing information by itself, any Qualia would be not produced, but implanted by someone, and as such, it would be not capable of providing the real fluency that we as humans need are conscious about all things that we experience in life.